10-09-2024, 06:43 AM
Swiss airline vs CPAP and seat power
Had a funny interaction with a flight attendant yesterday on my SWISS flight between Zürich and San Francisco. I had my ResMed 11 Autoset plugged into seat power, like I always do on long flights when I try to sleep. Never had a problem before, always works fine. I turn off the humidifier and hose heater.
This time around a flight attendant noticed it after I woke up and asked nicely about it. She told me that because it was a machine that she needed to verify it was allowed to be plugged in. Which led to much confusion as she found the official list of rules, tried to find my machine on it (ResMed 10 was closest match). End result was it was OK to use this CPAP either on battery or plugged in, but only without the humidifier.
She was very polite and thoughtful about it. But also quite firm and she seemed genuinely concerned. We asked why and she said something about "protecting the circuit breakers" followed quickly by "I am not an engineer but these rules are my job". Fair enough. Just don't relish the idea of having to go through this song-and-dance explaining a CPAP to someone on every flight just so I can breathe.
Mostly puzzled because I *am* an engineer. And I totally understand the concern about random equipment being plugged in to seat power, either overloading it or doing something dangerous that starts a fire. Turning off the heating functions is a totally reasonable rule. But surely the airline can't really enforce that at every seat, passengers must be plugging in random flaky equipment every day on flights. Crappy phone chargers must be a regular source of problems. I just assumed the seat power had sufficient protections.
Is this common policy? Does every airline technically want to inspect a CPAP before you plug it into seat power? Not to stereotype, but I could imagine a Swiss airline being a particular stickler for this kind of rule.
This time around a flight attendant noticed it after I woke up and asked nicely about it. She told me that because it was a machine that she needed to verify it was allowed to be plugged in. Which led to much confusion as she found the official list of rules, tried to find my machine on it (ResMed 10 was closest match). End result was it was OK to use this CPAP either on battery or plugged in, but only without the humidifier.
She was very polite and thoughtful about it. But also quite firm and she seemed genuinely concerned. We asked why and she said something about "protecting the circuit breakers" followed quickly by "I am not an engineer but these rules are my job". Fair enough. Just don't relish the idea of having to go through this song-and-dance explaining a CPAP to someone on every flight just so I can breathe.
Mostly puzzled because I *am* an engineer. And I totally understand the concern about random equipment being plugged in to seat power, either overloading it or doing something dangerous that starts a fire. Turning off the heating functions is a totally reasonable rule. But surely the airline can't really enforce that at every seat, passengers must be plugging in random flaky equipment every day on flights. Crappy phone chargers must be a regular source of problems. I just assumed the seat power had sufficient protections.
Is this common policy? Does every airline technically want to inspect a CPAP before you plug it into seat power? Not to stereotype, but I could imagine a Swiss airline being a particular stickler for this kind of rule.
